How to Set a Different Reply-to Address in Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail

03 Oct 2012

Most people at the top (mainly managers) need to delegate their tasks to the lower levels. They forward their emails to sub-ordinates so that they do not have to struggle with following up on those tasks. Now, the question is, why have that intermediate layer when you can request the mail recipients to reply to the sub-ordinates directly?

All you need to do is, set a different reply-to address when you send out emails. And here’s how you can do that on Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail. Besides, this would also work for people who have multiple email addresses and wish to use one reply-to address.

Steps to Set Up Reply-to on Gmail

Step 1: Log in to your account and navigate to Settings.

Step 2: Click on Accounts and Import tab and scroll to the section for Send mail as. Click on the link that reads Add another email address you own.

Step 3: Enter the email address that you want to make the reply-to address. This would also become your From address.

Step 4: If you wish to have another different reply-to address then click on Specify a different “reply-to” address.

Step 5: Now, you can populate a different reply-to address. Click on Next Steps when done.

Steps to Set Up Reply-to on Yahoo Mail

Step 2: On the left pane click on Mail Accounts. Then, on the right side populate the text box against Reply-to address with an appropriate address. Click on Save.

What Happens With the New Settings?

Whenever you send an email with your account that has a different reply-to address and the recipient chooses to reply to that message, the To field would also get populated with the reply-to address rather than the email sent address.

Let us look at an example.

A uses Gmail (A@gmail.com) and has set a Yahoo Mail (A@yahoo.com) address as reply-to.

A sends an email message to B.

B reads the message and chooses to reply. The reply would be sent to A@yahoo.com. That also means no reply would be received by A@gmail.com.

Conclusion

This feature will mostly come in handy for people who have the time to check their emails but do not have the time to reply to all of them. This provides for an easy way to delegate this task to someone else.